Turnbull walked away, wildly trying to explain to himself the presence
of two personal acquaintances so different as Vane and the girl. As he
skirted a low hedge of laurel, an enormously tall young man leapt over
it, stood in front of him, and almost fell on his neck as if seeking to
embrace him.
“Don't you know me?” almost sobbed the young man, who was in the highest
spirits. “Ain't I written on your heart, old boy? I say, what did you do
with my yacht?”
“Take your arms off my neck,” said Turnbull, irritably. “Are you mad?”
The young man sat down on the gravel path and went into ecstasies of
laughter. “No, that's just the fun of it--I'm not mad,” he replied.
“They've shut me up in this place, and I'm not mad.” And he went off
again into mirth as innocent as wedding-bells.
Turnbull, whose powers of surprise were exhausted, rolled his round grey
eyes and said, “Mr. Wilkinson, I think,” because he could not think of
anything else to say.
The tall man sitting on the gravel bowed with urbanity, and said: “Quite
at your service. Not to be confused with the Wilkinsons of Cumberland;
and as I say, old boy, what have you done with my yacht? You see,
they've locked me up here--in this garden--and a yacht would be a sort
of occupation for an unmarried man.”
“I am really horribly sorry,” began Turnbull, in the last stage of bated
bewilderment and exasperation, “but really----”
“Oh, I can see you can't have it on you at the moment,” said Mr.
Wilkinson with much intellectual magnanimity.
“Well, the fact is----” began Turnbull again, and then the phrase was
frozen on his mouth, for round the corner came the goatlike face and
gleaming eye-glasses of Dr. Quayle.
“Ah, my dear Mr. Wilkinson,” said the doctor, as if delighted at
a coincidence; “and Mr. Turnbull, too. Why, I want to speak to Mr.
Turnbull.”
Mr. Turnbull made some movement rather of surrender than assent, and
the doctor caught it up exquisitely, showing even more of his two front
teeth. “I am sure Mr. Wilkinson will excuse us a moment.” And with
flying frock-coat he led Turnbull rapidly round the corner of a path.
“My dear sir,” he said, in a quite affectionate manner, “I do not mind
telling you--you are such a very hopeful case--you understand so well
the scientific point of view; and I don't like to see you bothered by
the really hopeless cases. They are monotonous and maddening. The man
you have just been talking to, poor fellow, is one of the strongest
cases of pure _idee fixe_ that we have. It's very sad, and I'm afraid
utterly incurable. He keeps on telling everybody”--and the doctor
lowered his voice confidentially--“he tells everybody that two people
have taken is yacht. His account of how he lost it is quite incoherent.”
Turnbull stamped his foot on the gravel path, and called out: “Oh, I
can't stand this. Really----”
“I know, I know,” said the psychologist, mournfully; “it is a most
melancholy case, and also fortunately a very rare one. It is so rare, in
fact, that in one classification of these maladies it is entered under
a heading by itself--Perdinavititis, mental inflammation creating the
impression that one has lost a ship. Really,” he added, with a kind of
half-embarrassed guilt, “it's rather a feather in my cap. I discovered
the only existing case of perdinavititis.”
“But this won't do, doctor,” said Turnbull, almost tearing his hair,
“this really won't do. The man really did lose a ship. Indeed, not to
put too fine a point on it, I took his ship.”
Dr. Quayle swung round for an instant so that his silk-lined overcoat
rustled, and stared singularly at Turnbull. Then he said with hurried
amiability: “Why, of course you did. Quite so, quite so,” and with
courteous gestures went striding up the garden path. Under the first
laburnum-tree he stopped, however, and pulling out his pencil
and notebook wrote down feverishly: “Singular development in the
Elenthero-maniac, Turnbull. Sudden manifestation of Rapinavititis--the
delusion that one has stolen a ship. First case ever recorded.”
Turnbull stood for an instant staggered into stillness. Then he ran
raging round the garden to find MacIan, just as a husband, even a bad
husband, will run raging to find his wife if he is full of a furious
query. He found MacIan stalking moodily about the half-lit garden, after
his extraordinary meeting with Beatrice. No one who saw his slouching
stride and sunken head could have known that his soul was in the seventh
heaven of ecstasy. He did not think; he did not even very definitely
desire. He merely wallowed in memories, chiefly in material memories;
words said with a certain cadence or trivial turns of the neck or wrist.
Into the middle of his stationary and senseless enjoyment were thrust
abruptly the projecting elbow and the projecting red beard of Turnbull.
MacIan stepped back a little, and the soul in his eyes came very slowly
to its windows. When James Turnbull had the glittering sword-point
planted upon his breast he was in far less danger. For three pulsating
seconds after the interruption MacIan was in a mood to have murdered his
father.
And yet his whole emotional anger fell from him when he saw Turnbull's
face, in which the eyes seemed to be bursting from the head like
bullets. All the fire and fragrance even of young and honourable love
faded for a moment before that stiff agony of interrogation.
“Are you hurt, Turnbull?” he asked, anxiously.
“I am dying,” answered the other quite calmly. “I am in the quite
literal sense of the words dying to know something. I want to know what
all this can possibly mean.”
MacIan did not answer, and he continued with asperity: “You are still
thinking about that girl, but I tell you the whole thing is incredible.
She's not the only person here. I've met the fellow Wilkinson, whose
yacht we lost. I've met the very magistrate you were hauled up to when
you broke my window. What can it mean--meeting all these old people
again? One never meets such old friends again except in a dream.”
Then after a silence he cried with a rending sincerity: “Are you really
there, Evan? Have you ever been really there? Am I simply dreaming?”
MacIan had been listening with a living silence to every word, and now
his face flamed with one of his rare revelations of life.
“No, you good atheist,” he cried; “no, you clean, courteous, reverent,
pious old blasphemer. No, you are not dreaming--you are waking up.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are two states where one meets so many old friends,” said MacIan;
“one is a dream, the other is the end of the world.”
“And you say----”
“I say this is not a dream,” said Evan in a ringing voice.
“You really mean to suggest----” began Turnbull.
“Be silent! or I shall say it all wrong,” said MacIan, breathing hard.
“It's hard to explain, anyhow. An apocalypse is the opposite of a dream.
A dream is falser than the outer life. But the end of the world is more
actual than the world it ends. I don't say this is really the end of the
world, but it's something like that--it's the end of something. All the
people are crowding into one corner. Everything is coming to a point.”
“What is the point?” asked Turnbull.
“I can't see it,” said Evan; “it is too large and plain.”
Then after a silence he said: “I can't see it--and yet I will try to
describe it. Turnbull, three days ago I saw quite suddenly that our duel
was not right after all.”
“Three days ago!” repeated Turnbull. “When and why did this illumination
occur?”
“I knew I was not quite right,” answered Evan, “the moment I saw the
round eyes of that old man in the cell.”
“Old man in the cell!” repeated his wondering companion. “Do you mean
the poor old idiot who likes spikes to stick out?”
“Yes,” said MacIan, after a slight pause, “I mean the poor old idiot
who likes spikes to stick out. When I saw his eyes and heard his old
croaking accent, I knew that it would not really have been right to kill
you. It would have been a venial sin.”
“I am much obliged,” said Turnbull, gruffly.
“You must give me time,” said MacIan, quite patiently, “for I am trying
to tell the whole truth. I am trying to tell more of it than I know.”
“So you see I confess”--he went on with laborious distinctness--“I
confess that all the people who called our duel mad were right in a way.
I would confess it to old Cumberland Vane and his eye-glass. I would
confess it even to that old ass in brown flannel who talked to us about
Love. Yes, they are right in a way. I am a little mad.”
He stopped and wiped his brow as if he were literally doing heavy
labour. Then he went on:
“I am a little mad; but, after all, it is only a little madness. When
hundreds of high-minded men had fought duels about a jostle with the
elbow or the ace of spades, the whole world need not have gone wild over
my one little wildness. Plenty of other people have killed themselves
between then and now. But all England has gone into captivity in order
to take us captive. All England has turned into a lunatic asylum in
order to prove us lunatics. Compared with the general public, I might
positively be called sane.”
He stopped again, and went on with the same air of travailing with the
truth:
“When I saw that, I saw everything; I saw the Church and the world. The
Church in its earthly action has really touched morbid things--tortures
and bleeding visions and blasts of extermination. The Church has had her
madnesses, and I am one of them. I am the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
I am the Inquisition of Spain. I do not say that we have never gone mad,
but I say that we are fit to act as keepers to our enemies. Massacre is
wicked even with a provocation, as in the Bartholomew. But your modern
Nietzsche will tell you that massacre would be glorious without a
provocation. Torture should be violently stopped, though the Church is
doing it. But your modern Tolstoy will tell you that it ought not to be
violently stopped whoever is doing it. In the long run, which is most
mad--the Church or the world? Which is madder, the Spanish priest who
permitted tyranny, or the Prussian sophist who admired it? Which is
madder, the Russian priest who discourages righteous rebellion, or the
Russian novelist who forbids it? That is the final and blasting test.
The world left to itself grows wilder than any creed. A few days ago you
and I were the maddest people in England. Now, by God! I believe we are
the sanest. That is the only real question--whether the Church is really
madder than the world. Let the rationalists run their own race, and let
us see where _they_ end. If the world has some healthy balance other
than God, let the world find it. Does the world find it? Cut the world
loose,” he cried with a savage gesture. “Does the world stand on its own
end? Does it stand, or does it stagger?”
Turnbull remained silent, and MacIan said to him, looking once more at
the earth: “It staggers, Turnbull. It cannot stand by itself; you know
it cannot. It has been the sorrow of your life. Turnbull, this garden
is not a dream, but an apocalyptic fulfilment. This garden is the world
gone mad.”
Turnbull did not move his head, and he had been listening all the time;
yet, somehow, the other knew that for the first time he was listening
seriously.
“The world has gone mad,” said MacIan, “and it has gone mad about Us.
The world takes the trouble to make a big mistake about every little
mistake made by the Church. That is why they have turned ten counties
to a madhouse; that is why crowds of kindly people are poured into this
filthy melting-pot. Now is the judgement of this world. The Prince of
this World is judged, and he is judged exactly because he is judging.
There is at last one simple solution to the quarrel between the ball and
the cross----”
Turnbull for the first time started.
“The ball and----” he repeated.
“What is the matter with you?” asked MacIan.
“I had a dream,” said Turnbull, thickly and obscurely, “in which I saw
the cross struck crooked and the ball secure----”
“I had a dream,” said MacIan, “in which I saw the cross erect and the
ball invisible. They were both dreams from hell. There must be
some round earth to plant the cross upon. But here is the awful
difference--that the round world will not consent even to continue
round. The astronomers are always telling us that it is shaped like
an orange, or like an egg, or like a German sausage. They beat the
old world about like a bladder and thump it into a thousand shapeless
shapes. Turnbull, we cannot trust the ball to be always a ball; we
cannot trust reason to be reasonable. In the end the great terrestrial
globe will go quite lop-sided, and only the cross will stand upright.”
There was a long silence, and then Turnbull said, hesitatingly: “Has
it occurred to you that since--since those two dreams, or whatever they
were----”
“Well?” murmured MacIan.
“Since then,” went on Turnbull, in the same low voice, “since then we
have never even looked for our swords.”
“You are right,” answered Evan almost inaudibly. “We have found
something which we both hate more than we ever hated each other, and I
think I know its name.”
Turnbull seemed to frown and flinch for a moment. “It does not much
matter what you call it,” he said, “so long as you keep out of its way.”
The bushes broke and snapped abruptly behind them, and a very tall
figure towered above Turnbull with an arrogant stoop and a projecting
chin, a chin of which the shape showed queerly even in its shadow upon
the path.
“You see that is not so easy,” said MacIan between his teeth.
They looked up into the eyes of the Master, but looked only for a
moment. The eyes were full of a frozen and icy wrath, a kind of utterly
heartless hatred. His voice was for the first time devoid of irony.
There was no more sarcasm in it than there is in an iron club.
“You will be inside the building in three minutes,” he said, with
pulverizing precision, “or you will be fired on by the artillery at
all the windows. There is too much talking in this garden; we intend to
close it. You will be accommodated indoors.”
“Ah!” said MacIan, with a long and satisfied sigh, “then I was right.”
And he turned his back and walked obediently towards the building.
Turnbull seemed to canvass for a few minutes the notion of knocking the
Master down, and then fell under the same almost fairy fatalism as his
companion. In some strange way it did seem that the more smoothly they
yielded, the more swiftly would events sweep on to some great collision.